INTRODUCTION

I have created a number of resources about diving in the New York City area, including a guide for people just getting started, focused on boat diving and the offshore wrecks.  This article is about shore diving in our area.  It should be noted that I am based in northern New Jersey (near Belmar and Point Pleasant).   It has been many years since I have done any diving on Long Island or Beach 8th street (in Queens), so I don’t have much to say about those areas.  However, some of this general information will be useful for anyone doing local shore dives.

Check out the gallery below for some of my photos, as well as a video at the bottom of the page showing what diving is like at the Manasquan River railroad bridge. And feel free to get in touch if you have specific questions!

-Michael Rothschild

SHORE DIVING

Our charter boat dive trips are amazing, with many historic shipwrecks to explore.  And while these dives are deeper with typically better visibility, larger sea life and often fascinating back stories, shore diving has a number of advantages over boat diving.
 
First of all, once you have your gear, shore diving is very cheap – the cost of an air fill – while charter spots are usually $100-$200.  Also, you are not dependent on anyone else’s schedule, only the tides determine when you can dive.  The boats stop going out in the off season (December – April), but the ocean is always there.  There are no issues with sea sickness, and no cancelled dives due to big waves. 
 
The shallow water is usually warmer as well. While I always wear my dry suit for boat dives, I dive my 5mm wetsuit year-round off the shore.  A boat dive typically takes up at least half of a day, requiring you to be at the dock before 6 AM, and not returning until the afternoon.  Shore diving can be done in an hour, with plenty of time to enjoy other topside activities with your non-diving friends and family.

Night diving is an incredible experience - animals that hide during the day are out and about after sunset. Bioluminescence is also amazing, and I have seen this in New Jersey. The charter boats very rarely do night dives, but when high slack tide lines up with a reasonable time of the evening, try a night shore dive. Dawn and dusk diving is also an option when the tides are right, it's a lot of fun to watch the undersea world wake up.
 
One issue with shore diving is that most of them are tidal in nature.  While there are a few dive sites directly off the coast in the open ocean, most of these have been covered with sand in recent years, and there is little sea life on the open sandy bottom.  Therefore, our shore sites are typically ocean inlets, where the clear sea water floods upstream twice a day, giving the best dive window with minimal current, greater depth and better visibility at “high slack."
 
Any shore diver should have an app that shows the local tides.  Depending on the location of the site and the width of the inlet, getting in the water at the wrong time can be anything from barely noticeable to a significant risk of catastrophe.  I will go over specific dive sites later on in this article, but for the most part, it is best to plan your dive around slack tide, both for safety and for visibility.
 
Tidal water motion follows a cycle, which repeats twice each day.  High tide is when the incoming sea water results in the greatest depth, and low tide is shallowest.  Slack tide just means that the water stops moving in or out, and there is no tidal flow at all.  Generally, high and low tides correspond with slack tide – the ocean floods inwards upstream, raises the water level, and then flows back out to sea with the water level dropping until low tide is reached.  However, there are some situations related to local geography where high tide and slack tide are at slightly different times.  More on this later.
 
Tidal water flow is inversely proportional to the width and depth of the channel.  Since the same amount of water has to move through all parts of the inlet during any given time period, it moves faster through narrow passages.  An example of this at the Jersey shore would be the Manasquan River railroad bridge, where the streambed is narrow between the abutments.  This means that a diver who stays long past slack tide will be squirted eastward at high speed past the piers as the current builds.  On the other hand, the Belmar Back Bay is very wide, so the current is rarely an issue, no matter when you enter the water.  For some dive sites (like the Shark River jetty), miscalculating your dive timing can mean being swept out to sea.
 
Typically, you want to plan your dive so that you enter the water as the tide is still flowing upstream, maybe 20-30 minutes before high slack.  That means that you will have about an hour, centered on the still water of slack tide, with a small amount of current before and after that.  If you need to swim against the current, you will have an easier time of it.
 
Some of the sites (like the railroad bridge or the Belmar Back Bay) are open to divers 24/7, 365 days a year.  For others with heavy boat traffic, diving is not allowed during peak boating hours. 
 
As far as site access, the Jersey shore really welcomes divers.  There are no issues with parking permits (like at Ponquogue bridge on Long Island).  Street parking is available and safe, and some sites have parking lots.  Local groups have even built equipment tables at some of the sites specifically for divers, to help people gear up.  
 
While local ordinances vary from town to town, in general you are required to tow a surface float with a dive flag, to alert boat operators of the presence of a diver in the water.  They in turn are restricted from operating near such a flag.
 
While the shore dive sites sometimes have excellent visibility, this is the exception rather than the rule.  That doesn’t mean you can’t have a great dive on most days.  Even on days where visibility is particularly bad, I have had a lot of fun doing “muck diving” to photograph the smaller residents of the area.  If you like, there are some online groups where people routinely post visibility reports so that you can make a decision before driving to the site.
 
Macro photographers and other divers prepared to explore the nooks and crannies of these healthy, vibrant marine environments will not be disappointed.  In late summer and early fall, not only are the sites dripping with life, but many tropical species which come north on the Gulf Stream can be found.  Visibility is often much better in the cold weather of winter and early spring, but there is less obvious sea life to be seen at those times.
 
Like for all NYC area dives, two cutting devices should be carried, as you may encounter discarded fishing line and other entanglement hazards.  I recommend a trauma shears carried on a harness or other BC attachment.  These are cheap and incredibly strong – they can cut heavy rope or wires.  Unlike a dive knife, they can be used with minimal risk of injury, even in a panic situation.  As a backup, I carry a Trilobite line cutter on the wrist strap of my dive computer.  Remember, you may well be sharing a dive site with people who are fishing, and those lines and hooks can end up in your path.  It’s not common, but it is possible to get snagged – it happened to me.
 
Nitrox is unnecessary for these dives, depths are typically less than 20 feet.  While a redundant gas supply is often used on boat dives in our area, this is generally not needed for shore diving given the proximity of the surface.  A light is a good idea, as there are plenty of small holes to explore.  And if you are diving in an area where getting swept away on the current is a potential risk, carry signaling devices (such as a whistle and/or a rescue GPS). And a mesh bag can be useful to help you carry any trash or artifacts you might pick up.

Finally, a compass is very important - it's easy to get lost or disoriented when you aren't on something like a big wreck. While you can navigate by sensing the current, watching the falloff of the bottom depth or following undersea structures (like the inlet seawall), a compass will help you find your way home and avoid ending up in an active shipping channel.

I lock my wallet and phone in my car using the waterproof "valet key" which is detachable from many modern electronic key fobs. I just put the key in my bathing suit pocket, under my wetsuit, where it can't get lost. For people who have electronic keys and no valet key option, the options are to bring a reliable waterproof case (be sure it's secure!), or hide your key somewhere on or near your car.
 
Now let’s go over some specific dive sites! I only describe the four that I commonly do in my area, and i don't mean to imply that there aren't other great places to shore dive in New Jersey. There are some good resources if you want to find other sites, like the book by Daniel and Denise Berg, or the one by Tom Gormley and Ben Gualano. However, these are the ones that I have experience diving.

MANASQUAN RIVER RAILROAD BRIDGE
 
The railroad bridge is my favorite dive in this area –plentiful sea life, an easy entry, convenient parking, the lack of time restrictions or boat traffic, and the fact that there is not much risk of getting swept downriver or out to sea.
 
The site is in the Gull Island County Park, on the south shore of the Manasquan river, in the town of Point Pleasant.  The land seen looking north across the water is Gull Island, a conservation area.  Past that is the rest of the river and the north shore in Brielle, but diving is confined to the area near the bridge and to the immediate east of it, downriver.
 
There is a parking lot reserved for anyone using the Gull Island county park, right next to Spike’s restaurant (a great place for a post-dive meal).  You can also street park on Broadway, which is even closer to the entry point. There is no public bathroom at the site, but there usually is a porta-potty.  The site is open to diving year-round, 24/7.
 
There is a gear table next to the parking lot, or you can gear up right at the seawall – it’s at a good height for donning your rig.  Entry is an easy stroll down a ramp to a little beach on the east side of the south end of the bridge.  Get in the water, then watch the current and slip down the bank to the site once it has reasonably slowed – slack tide is often 30-40 minutes after the published high tide.  You can estimate the flow by watching the water ripple around the bridge. 
 
While knowing the tides is important for all inlet diving, getting caught in an outgoing tide here is not as much of a problem as it might be elsewhere.  The water widens east of the bridge, which means that the flow drops off.  Also, you are fairly far from the ocean.  If necessary, you can just swim south and make it back to the entry point by “walking” along the wall.
 
Most of the sea life is right under the bridge.  But people also dive in the wider area to the east of the site, where there are larger fish, attracting spearhunters on scuba or freediving.   If you go through the bridge piles and keep swimming west, you will be heading towards the marina - don’t do this.  Stay away from the docks, and stick to the area close to the bridge.  There is virtually no boat traffic near it, apart from the occasional kayak. 
 
There is a lot of biodiversity here, with blennies making territorial homes in cans, pipes and other secure spots – these are commonly seen on the river bank to the north of the bridge on the western (marina) side.  Toadfish are found in the dense mussel beds under the bridge.  Schools of northern puffers coast over the shoals, and you can see horseshoe crabs, skates, eel, lobsters, flounder and juvenile cunner.  In late season, butterflyfish are often in the slope just off the entry point. 
 
As mentioned above, the current at this site really picks up as you stay longer and longer past slack tide.  I find this to be a great time to dive.  While it’s harder to anchor yourself for photography, letting the current carry you under the bridge, superman style, is a lot of fun.  If you don’t mind crawling back upcurrent, you can swim south to the shallows, head back west to the bridge, pull yourself through, and take the ride again.  And occasionally you will be in the water as a train goes over the bridge – another exciting part of the dive, as you hear and feel the thundering above.

BELMAR BACK BAY
 
This very wide portion of a tidal estuary between Belmar and Avon-by-the-Sea.  The dive site is mainly the shallow water near the southern seawall, where seahorses and other small critters may be found in 6 feet of water.  However, swimming north towards the center of the channel will get you more depth (around 15 feet) and bigger fish.  There are no mussel beds or other riverbed structure like you find on the bridge, which means a lot less sea life.  Nevertheless, if you look in the fringes of the sea grass on the sandy bottom or along the wall, you may find some interesting fish and crabs.
 
The entrance to the dive site is down a set of wooden stairs (installed by the town for divers) in a public facility called Maclearie Park.  There is a gearing bench for divers, similar to the one at the Railroad bridge.  Maclearie can get pretty crowded on a nice summer weekend, since the town also provides picnic tables and grills.  There are bathrooms, tennis courts and a playground.
 
Because the Back Bay is so wide, the current is usually negligible.  Nevertheless, getting in around high tide is recommended, just because most of the site is so shallow.  Also, the water tends to be clearer at high tide, due to the influx of relatively clean ocean water.  The site is open to diving year-round, 24/7.

A STREET IN BELMAR
 
Heading east from the Back Bay, the next dive site is a stretch on the south shore of the Shark River inlet, with an entrance/exit point where A street turns at the water.  Parking is more limited here, and on a popular dive or fishing day, you may need to park a block or two away. The entry is more difficult here than at the bridge or the Back Bay, although the town has created a concrete ramp leading from the road down to the large boulders that line this waterway.  Once at the end of the ramp, you climb down onto the rocks and enter the water.  This can be challenging if you are carrying heavy gear like a camera.  Carry your fins in your hand and put them on in the water or when sitting at the edge - it’s not a good idea to try to walk in them.
 
I usually just drop to the bottom here at around 15 feet and swim east, hugging the rocks along the shore, staying out of the main channel.  The current can be much more of an issue here, you don’t want to be caught far away from the entry/exit point when the tide turns.  Get in the water about 20-30 minutes before high slack tide, and start swimming east into the incoming water.  When you feel the current stopping, that’s a good time to turn your dive and head back, again facing into the water flow.  By planning your dive around high slack, you won’t have long swims in very heavy current to deal with.  Usually, your turning point will be just before the Ocean Avenue bridge. 
 
You typically see bigger fish here than at the Back Bay or the railroad bridge, due to the proximity of the ocean.  There is a small protected area just west of A street on the south shore of the river, behind the pilings near the apartment complex seawall.  I find that you can sometimes extend your dive a bit after you have returned to the entry/exit point if you still have gas, as it is shielded from the current.  Don’t venture too far from the exit point in the face of an outgoing tide. 
 
There can be a good deal of large boat traffic in this area.  For this reason, diving is prohibited between 8:00 AM and 5:30 PM, between May 1st and October 1st.  But even when diving is allowed, be aware that big boats can show up at any time.

BELMAR JETTY
 
To get even further out (and to potentially see bigger sea life), you can also dive on the east side of the Ocean Avenue bridge.  The entry here is by way of the beach, and you have to scramble down the large boulders near the bridge abutment.  This is one of the more difficult entries in the area, and there are also likely to be people fishing on the jetty.
 
Again, this is a strong tidal dive, and miscalculating can end up with you being swept out into the ocean.   Be sure to time your entry so that you can easily swim back to the exit point.  Some very confident and strong divers will swim out to the end of the rocks, then go around the tip and swim back to the beach on the opposite side of the jetty.
 
Just like A street, hours are restricted between May 1st and October 1st (no diving from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM). 

SHORE DIVING VIDEO
 
Here is a little "sizzle reel" that I put together of the diving at the Manasquan River Railroad Bridge.

This website is meant to help divers who are new to diving in the New York City area to become familiar with the specific practices, culture, gear and conditions commonly encountered here. It is NOT meant to be a substitute for formal training and certification with an appropriate instructor and agency. Every diver is responsible for their own equipment, dive planning and safety.